


Saga of the Traitor

by Immanuel



Series: Inferno [2]
Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000, Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors
Genre: Age of Darkness, Burning of Prospero, Gen, Knights Errant - Horus Heresy, Space Wolves, Thousand Sons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-04-03 15:36:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4106098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Immanuel/pseuds/Immanuel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sworn honour-brothers Darius Greyfang and Heka T'Bitjet face one another as Prospero burns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saga of the Traitor

THE AXE WAS cold to the touch even through his armour. Darius, called Greyfang by his kith and kin, ran gauntleted fingers along its rune-carved edge, muttering the words of old sagas to shut out the unnatural chill in the air.  
  Seated across from him, Rjúfen Fireborn rested his forehead on the haft of his own axe. He would have appeared restful but for the wet leopard growls that issued forth from behind bared fangs. His discomfort was the greater, for he was more closely tied to the spirits on Fenris than was Greyfang. The axe in his grip did not help matters – every skjald knew the stories of how those who wielded _Banisvatr_ were on edge, ever hungry for battle. Perhaps it was indicative of the character of those who would wield a weapon as brutal as the double-headed battle axe, but some dared venture the idea that the axe itself was malign. It certainly had the saga to go with it.  
 Superficially, it seemed of a like kind to the axe held in Greyfang’s hands. Larger, heavier with its second head, but the same black cutting edge wrapped in runes and webbed with hoarfrost. Unlike _Svartursvell_ , the runes on Fireborn’s axe did not channel the power of the wielder, but were a source of power in their own right. It was said that the axe had stood embedded deep in rock in a cavern that led into the realm of Morkai himself.  
  The saga went that Leman Russ had laughed at the tale, pulling the axe free without discernible effort and handing it to the Rune Priesthood. The Lord of Winter and War was not one to heed cautionary tales. He said if Morkai wanted his axe back, he would have to come forth and fight for it. It would be no easy fight, for the axe made a deadly fighter out of any with the strength to wield it. A Space Marine was already a formidable foe, a Rune Priest more so. It made Fireborn a whirlwind of fire and death.  
  Greyfang’s eyes moved from the axe, drawn towards the hole clawing at the edge of his perception. His gaze slipped past the other Astartes seated in the Stormbird to the two figures at the end of the troop compartment. Armoured in gold where the Astartes wore the storm-grey of the vlka fenryka, Teresa Lexovien and Ihlia Ahava sat with heads bowed in silence.  
  He almost laughed aloud at the thought. How else should maidens of the Silent Sisterhood sit but in silence? Their hollow presence in his mind stopped him. They seemed to drain all the life out of those around them, the hollow where their soul should have been radiating a cold that pierced through flesh and mind, into the very soul.  
One of the null maidens traced her fingers over an amulet of obsidian she held, marked with a symbol of two bars connecting concave curves. It bore a striking resemblance to the Eyes of Thjazi, though it was clearly not of Fenrisian make.  
  The cold grew in his bones as he watched her. After Nikaea, he had hoped never to feel its touch again. That hope had come to nought when the Lord of Winter and War had instructed the Silent Sisterhood to accompany the vehicles carrying the Rune Priests in order to conceal their positions from the enemy.  
  The normally raucous Wolves were hushed not only by the hollow presence of the Silent Sisterhood, but by the mission they were embarked on. Nothing about it boded well. It was an unhappy way to return to Prospero.

 _We stand on a balcony high on the Pyramid of Photep looking out over Tizca. The setting sun bathes the city in prismatic light as it weaves its way through the towering peaks of glass before entering our eyes, mine the black-pinned gold of a wolf, his cærulean flecked with silver as if wrought from the very stuff of magick._  
_Heka breaks the silence. “Beautiful, isn’t it.”_  
_I turn my gaze from the city to Heka T’Bitjet, Sorcerer-Librarian of the Thousand Sons. I am armoured, out of place in this city of scholars. The Mark II plate seems crude among its surroundings. Heka is in his element, the elegance of the city’s architecture mirrored in robes embroidered with the imagery of the Cult of the Corvidae, in whose pyramid-temple we stand._  
_“But you didn’t come here to look at the scenery,” he continued. “Not even to see an old friend.”_  
_“Russ is unconvinced of the proposition to establish Librarius departments in the Legions.” He greets the statement with silence. “He would like to unconvince Magnus.”_  
_“And we are supposed to conduct negotiations on our fathers’ parts?”_  
_I laugh at that. “I think we’re supposed to have a more reasonable discussion than they will. Leave the animosity aside, lay a foundation.”_  
_“Is he planning to visit the others, too? Sanguinius, the Khan?”_  
_“You know the idea came from Magnus, the fact that others were willing to humour him doesn’t change that.”_  
_“It’s just Magnus he doesn’t trust, then.”_  
_“Heka,” an edge of annoyance creeps into my voice._  
_“It’s a good idea. Why waste a weapon so potent as our minds? I’m not sure I understand your opposition,” he raises an eyebrow, tilting his head slightly. “You have your Rune Priests.”_  
_“It’s not the same thing,” I sigh._  
_“So you keep telling me.”_  
_“I remember the time before Russ. Hel, I even know a little of your ‘Art’. The wyrd is primal, a force of nature. You’ve seen what the warp can do, the destruction it wreaks. You call it the Great Ocean, but you forget that humanity of old rightly feared the ocean. It cannot be tamed. Magnus has always refused to understand that.”_  
_“You never were a very good student,” he jests with a smile. “I always forget you’re not actually from Fenris. It would have suited you.” He claps me on the shoulder as he turns to walk back inside the Pyramid of Photep. “I suppose our fathers were wrong to think that even we could see eye-to-eye on this.”_

Greyfang was brought back to the present with a start as _Fjalarkalla_ bucked violently. The starboard engines died, causing the Stormbird to veer sharply off-course.  
  _“We’ve lost the fuel lines on the starboard engines_ ,” Gjurd voxed from the cockpit. “ _Brace for impact_.”  
  “Helatǫnnar,” Fireborn cursed.  
  The sides of the hull began to contort, the indentations pushing in like the curshing embrace of a giant’s hand.  
  “Maleficarum,” Greyfang gripped the amulet around his neck, calling on the spirits of Fenris to ward off whatever devilry had hold of the Stormbird.  
  With the presence of the silent sisters, it proved futile.  
  “Can you not stop their sorcery?” Fireborn’s grip shifted uncomfortably on _Banisvatr_ in frustration at his own impotence.  
  _But for our presence, the hull might have been torn clean in two by now_ , Lexovien signed in a variant of Astartes battlesign. _Unless we get close to the source, there is little more that can be done_.  
  Greyfang grimaced, watching the giant’s fingers push deeper into _Fjalarkalla_ ’s metal skin as she accelerated to the ground. The metal screeched in protest at the forces of gravity and sorcery arrayed against it.  
  Suddenly, a moment of calm as the pressure of the invisible hands withdrew. The moment passed as _Fjalarkalla_ met the ground in a bone-crunching impact that ripped the troop compartment from the fuselage and sent it rolling into the side of a pyramid.  
  Shards of broken glass rained into the ruined hold, bringing forth trickles of blood from the unhelmed heads of the Wolves. Their Larraman cells halted the flow almost as soon as it started.  
  Greyfang assessed the chaos around him. The Wolves had weathered the impact more or less unscathed in their powered armour, and the Sisters, though badly shaken, had both escaped Morkai’s jaws. Fireborn had already torn himself from his restraint harness, climbing the once-ceiling that now formed the angled wall of the hold. Releasing his own restraints, Greyfang joined his brother for their first look at the battlescape of Tizca.  
  The sky was stained orange by flames where it had not yet been swallowed by plumes of smoke. The atmosphere shimmered intermittently with firelight refracting through glass particles hanging in the air as they tumbled from the scorched frames of the once beautiful pyramids of the city of light.  
  A few hundred metres along the trail of destruction wrought by the displace troop hold, the rest of the _Fjalarkalla_ exploded as the fire flickering along the remains of the structure in which it was embedded found the detached fuel-line that had begun its fall from the heavens. Many brothers would have been immolated in other troop holds that had not the fortune to be thrown clear. He bared his teeth with a wet leopard growl. Away from the null maidens, he could feel the sorcery thick in the air.  
  Lasfire bounced off his armour, the threat minimal. In his bulkier Terminator armour, Fireborn was all but invulnerable. He opened his palm towards the Spireguard sheltering in the rubble, engulfing them in a ball of fire while the pack clambered out of the wrecked troop compartment behind him.  
The crash had thrown them off course, seemingly far from the main fighting. The resounding beat of boltguns and other, heavier weaponry beat to the south. The pack loped towards the din of battle.  
  “There,” Greyfang pointed into the sky at a Stormbird torn from its course as it made a strafing run. He closed his eyes, marshalling his thoughts. Though he had no great skill at reading the wyrd, the aetheric energy needed to achieve such kinetic feats was so great that it guided him easily to the source. “I have him.”  
  Fireborn seemed distracted, looking blankly back at him.  
  “The sorcerer who pulled us from the sky,” Greyfang explained.  
  Fireborn nodded. “Go. Take the pack and the maidens. A Titan is walking, I am being summoned to hold back the fire.”  
  The Rune Priests each took the other’s arm in the warriors’ grip, gauntlets of Terminator and power armour clattering together.  
  “Good hunting then, brother,” Greyfang said. If anyone could hold back flame weapons carried by a Titan, it was Fireborn – Rjúfen had been honoured to earn his oath-name fighting alongside the Eighteenth Legion, and no-one knew fire like the Salamanders.  
  The heavy footfalls of Terminator armour receded into the distance as Greyfang began following the strand of the wyrd that would lead him to the sorcerer he sought.  
  The pack advanced through streets paved with the shattered glass of Tizca’s ravaged architecture, picking off pockets of feeble resistance from the mortals of the Prosperine Spireguard that crossed their path. They turned a corner, and knew at once they had found their mark.  
  A squad of Thousand Sons of the Scarab Occult stood at an intersection, pouring fire into the dying remainder of another pack. A pair of Wulfen leapt out of the shadows, but were held fast in mid-air by the squad’s sergeant. The huge pauldron of his Terminator armour bore the hooked claw of the Raptora. Two of the others extended their arms, engulfing the suspended Wulfen in psychic fire.  
  Greyfang howled the order to charge, lifting his arms to the sky as he gathered a storm worthy of the skies of Fenris. As his axe fell, so a bolt of lightning fell upon the sorcerer sergeant.  
  The lightning flashed harmlessly against an invisible kine shield surrounding the sergeant. He raised his hand, sending a wave of force at the charging Wolves even as the pyromancers sent a wave of pyroclastic energy down the road.  
  It dissipated before it reached the pack, breaking on the aura of the null maidens running alongside the Wolves. Frantically, the Thousand Sons opened up with their combi-bolters. They managed a short burst before the distance close into mêlée. Greyfang noted with a sense of foreboding that alongside the fallen body of one of the Wolves lay one of the null maidens, her armour and body unrecognisable, shredded by concentrated bolter fire.  
  The survivors were hard-pressed in combat against the tougher Terminator armour of the Scarab Occult, but Greyfang’s attention was on the sergeant alone. A mass of twisted metal came hurtling towards the mêlée, the indirect use of psychic power unmolested by the presence of the surviving null maiden. Throwing a bolt of lightning from his hand, Greyfang threw the wreckage off course before sending another directly at the sergeant.  
  It was interrupted by the null maiden as she darted out of the mêlée, piercing the sergeant’s should with her power sword as he reeled from the shock of her proximity. An obsidian amulet was wrapped around the hilt, binding it to Ahava’s wrist. Unable to intervene meaningfully, he turned his attention to the fight the pack of Wolves were losing and left her to match her blade against the great two-handed glaive of the sorcerer.  
  Only a handful of Wolves still fought, though the charge had hit but moments before. One of the Scarab Occult was down, but it was quite apparent that those that remained would carry the fight. Greyfang called a bolt of lightning down from the storm still churning the sky above them, cooking one of the Thousand Sons inside his armour. The next bolt missed as its intended target stepped aside in a flash of precognition.  
  Then it was too late. The last of the pack fell beneath a power fist, and four barrels of Astartes fury were unleashed on Greyfang. He brought the storm down, summoning the wolf spirits to intercept the fire. A handful of bolts punched into his chest, but his armour held.  
  A flash of gold drew his eye. Ahava writhed feebly in the air, impaled on the end of the sergeant’s glaive. The sorcerer threw her dying form from him, breaking it against the hollow shell of a building.  
  Abandoning any attempt to preserve his own life, Greyfang focussed all the power of Fenris flowing through him into a single blast, shattering the sergeant’s hastily assembled kine shield with thunderous force. The sergeant fell to the ground, weapon falling from his grasp. Greyfang closed his eyes, bracing himself for the barrage of bolts that would cut his thread.  
  +Stop.+  
  The command pulsed in his head, and he knew it was also in the minds of the Thousand Sons. From out of the smoke, a power armoured figure emerged. He wore the regalia of the Fifteenth Legion, the raven’s head of the Corvidae set in the centre of the Legion’s serpentine star.  
  “Fall back towards the Pyramid of Photep, Abasi,” the new arrival said.  
  “I would have his head first,” Abasi replied, picking up his fallen glaive and taking a step towards Greyfang.  
  “He is mine to deal with, brother,” the other sorcerer placed a hand against the jade scarab in the centre of Abasi’s breastplate. “They are all gathered there – Ahriman, T’kar, Auramagma. The final push is coming, and the Wolf King leads the charge. They will have need of you.”  
  Grudgingly, Abasi signalled the survivors of his squad and began the march back to the heart of Tizca.  
  “Heka,” Greyfang greeted the new sorcerer. “When last we parted, I had hoped our next meeting would be under better circumstances.”

 _The Lord of Winter and War throws back his head and howls._  
_Though I am far away, I feel the rage in that howl. I do not need to read the wyrd to know that the final battle for Shrike had run ill._  
_I reach the Phoenix Crag soon after Russ. Too late to witness Skarssen’s charge across the causeway, but soon enough to see one of the Thousand Sons turned into a mutant beast. The Lord of Winter and War advances slowly, patient and confident, smoking pistol held in one hand, drawing the great frostblade_ Mjalnar _with the other. Magnus the Red comes to meet him, stepping past the bleeding corpse of his flesh-changed son._  
_My eyes roved the ranks of the Thousand Sons, settling on one who cradles the head of a dead brother in his hands. Tears of blood streamed down the dead Legionary’s face from hollow sockets. Seeming to feel my eyes on his unhelmed head, Heka T’Bitjet looks up._  
_Eyes of gold and silver meet across the causeway._

“A worthy thought, Darius,” T’Bitjet replied, removing his helm and letting it fall to the ground with a sad smile. “Yet it seems the fates were set against us. We are, after all, our fathers’ sons.”  
  He drew a curved khopeshi force sword, raising it in readiness to attack.  
  “It doesn’t have to end like this, brother,” Greyfang kept his own weapon low. “Surrender and return with us to Terra.”  
  “It is too late, cousin,” the smile faded from T’Bitjet’s face, leaving the sadness in his hollow gaze. “Only one Legion walks away this day.”  
  He stepped forward and lunged at Greyfang’s throat. Unable to bring his axe up in time, Greyfang sidestepped the blade, batting aside the follow-up slash with the flat of the axe head. Though he parried blow after blow, the toll of fighting a precog began to tell as the khopesh slipped past his guard, the curved blade hooking around his axe to stab perilously close to his hearts. He sensed the building psychic energy about to be send coursing down the blade and seized his chance.  
  With T’Bitjet’s concentration focussed on channelling the Warp along his force blade, his ability to predict the future was limited to merely prosaic means. It was not enough against the hand that snaped out as fast as thought, takng him by the throat even as Greyfang tore the blade free of his chest in the crook of his axe. It cut a fierce wound, but spared him the lethal discharge of psychic energy.  
  T’Bitjet was lifted bodily bodily in the air. Greyfang breathed heavily, beginning to choke the life out of the Thousand Son before shaking his head and seemingly thinking better of it. He threw T’Bitjet to the ground, stepping on his arm to stay the khopesh. _Svartursvell_ hung menacingly above T’Bitjet’s throat.  
  “We are blood brothers, you and I. I will not kill you,” Greyfang growled.  
  “Is that why you stay your hand? I release you from the bond. Each of us has saved the life of the other, and now one of us shall slay the other,” T’Bitjet sent a mental blast at Greyfang, leaping to his feet as the boot lifted from his arm. “A fitting end is it not, cousin?”  
  Greyfang barely managed to raise his axe in time. The blow came in hard, hammering into his guard driven by every ounce of transhuman strength T’Bitjet possessed. The force blades ground against each other in a shower of sparks, neither giving an inch.  
  Whatever Greyfang lacked in prescience, he made up for in brawler’s instinct. He planted his foot in T’Bitjet’s midriff, sending the sorcerer stumbling back. Taking a step back himself, he brought his axe up into a guard position.  
  “Why do you fight the Imperium? You do not want this, none of you do. You are not traitors.”  
  “There is no life left for us with the Imperium, we would go to join the forgotten and the purged. Magnus chose death, but we have chosen life. And for that, you must die.”  
  T’Bitjet drew too far back, allowing Greyfang to dart forward and grasp his arm in a vice like grip that prevented the swing. The Rune Priest lashed out, striking the sorcerer’s exposed face with the haft of his axe. A handful of teeth flew free in a spray of blood. He made to strike another blow, but it never fell.  
  The two stood, each having hold of the weapon arm of the other, grappling for control. For all his strength, Greyfang was disadvantaged, his own arm gripped by the fist where he held on to the forearm. T’Bitjet rolled his wrist, adjusting his grip on the khopesh and gradually bringing it to bear.  
  “It will not be like that, brother,” the stress was evident in Greyfang’s voice as he was losing the battle for control of T’Bitjet’s blade. “My father is not beyond reasoning.”  
  The blade inched closer to his throat, burning flesh with the fierce psychic energy flowing through it.  
  “Please,” Greyfang pleaded with his once brother, “Trust me, brother. As you once did.”  
  T’Bitjet hesitated.

 _Meiriona. It will be entered into the Imperial records as One-Sixty-Six Seven, but its people call it Meiriona. The White Scars’ assault has been blunted by the Chiasmodon that dwell beneath the surface of the planet, emerging from the dark of sinkholes pockmarking the surface to prey on its people. They have a curious ability to distribute energy directed at them. Who knows how many of them dwell in the deep, absorbing impacts meant for those we fight up here._ _Even psychic energy is unable to bypass this ability. The_ zadyin arga _of the Horde and a_ gothi _of the Rout, on secondment just as I am, blast them with the fury of thunder and lightning, but to no avail. Their open use of their abilities makes me question our own decision to conceal our power._  
_I am hanging from the edge of a sinkhole. We do not know how deep they go. Perhaps I would survive the fall. Perhaps I would emerge on the other side of the world._  
_My grip falters._  
_I fall, only to be raised from perdition by a tight grip on my shoulder. Earth and sky flashed past, the roar of a jetbike’s engines in my ears. Around the image of the Wolf that Stalks Between Stars I see the grinning face of Darius Greyfang, thick mane of steel hair streaming behind him._  
_“I have a plan,”_  
_I rise through the Enumerations, glimpsing the unfolding future. “Are you mad?”_  
_The old Wolf winks down at me. “Trust me, brother.”_  
_Greyfang released his grip._  
_I look down as I fall. I twist my body, evading the Chiasmodon’s arm-length fangs to pass cleanly down its gullet. I land in its stomach. This is the limit of what I have foreseen, now I can but hope Darius’ plan is sound._  
_My skin prickles with static. The darkness is illuminated as the jade scarab at my chest begins to glow. The tides of the Great Ocean grow strong, lapping at the boundaries of my mind. Crashing. Darius is channelling his power through me, to assault the alien from within. I let the aetheric energy free, a tidal wave rolling out of my mind with a peal of thunder. It is transformed into ball lightning, cooking alien flesh. Vaporising it._  
_I tear my way through the ruined flesh of the Chiasmodon, emerging into sunlight. Darius sits idly on his jetbike, grinning from ear to ear. He seems very pleased with his caper._  
_“They appear less absorbent from within,” he remarks._  
_“Would a grenade not have sufficed?”_  
_I suspect it would not, but I ask the question nonetheless._  
_“It wouldn’t have been nearly as dramatic,” he laughs._  
_“You nearly killed me,” I laugh as I peel scraps of xeno-flesh from my armour, unable to contain my own mirth._  
_It is a strange thing how we have bonded when parted from our true brothers. I reflect that the White Scars are, in many ways, similar to both our Legions._  
_“I’ll try harder next time,” he replies, surveying the smoking carcass. He adopts a look of feigned surprise. “I can’t believe that actually worked.”_

Through the crosshairs of his sniper rifle, Sven Bloodeye watched the sorcerer release the pressure on his blade and take a step back. As the two embraced, he lined up a shot to pass through both their skulls. He pulled the trigger.  
  The bullet passed harmlessly through the space where their heads had been a fraction of a second before. He blinked in disbelief, easing his finger off the trigger.  
  “Jarl, Greyfang stepped into bivröst with a sorcerer of the Fifteenth,” he voxed. “He has forsaken his kin.”  
  Bloodeye did not wait for a response, rising to seek out new prey. He put the incident from his mind. There was no time to be lost wondering at the fate of the vanished.

 _I am flying through infinity. If the warp is indeed a Great Ocean, it is boiling around us at the force of our passing. Fire wraps around us like the contrail of a meteor. Like the boiling waters, the flames shimmer with every colour that exists, and many that do not. Each shade is refracted not by light, but by thought and emotion._  
_We pass through the warp, but it does not touch us. I do not follow the currents as Heka would. I wrap us in the frigid purity of the winds of Fenris, forming an impenetrable cocoon as we pass over the tumultuous storm that wracks Prospero._  
_A clawed hand emerges from the kaleidoscopic sea, scratching at my defences. The range I am attempting is considerable, the time spent crossing the warp drawing the predators that dwell in it to us. As long as we remain apart from the warp, as long as I resist the temptation to draw from the Great Ocean rather than the well of the wyrd, it cannot touch us._  
_I see a great eye, rampant on a field of gold. Lidless, wreathed in cærulean flame. Spirals of golden text wheel within the iris.  
_

They stepped out of the gate of infinity into the interior of a warship. Greyfang’s aim had been put astray, leaving them somewhere deep in the bowels of the ship.  
  “What n-,” T’Bitjet stumbled into the wall, a hand clutching at his chest. His breathing became heavy, strained.  
  Greyfang approached him warily. “No – not you. Not you, brother.”  
  T’Bitjet cried out in agony as his body convulsed. His khopesh clattered to the ground. When he looked at Greyfang, there was undiluted terror in his eyes. “What have you done?”  
  His armour rippled, then burst as new limbs and masses of flesh broke out of every joint and seam. Where once had stood a Legionary of the Thousand Sons, now there was only a hideous monstrosity of rampant mutation. The remains of T’Bitjet’s power armour were embedded in the spawn’s corrupt flesh.  
  A tentacle lashed out, whipping over Greyfang’s head as he ducked. He swung his axe, severing the limb, but more were growing at a rapid rate. Roaring through a half dozen mouths gaping in its head and torso, the spawn charged forward, ramming him into the wall. He gasped, axe falling from nerveless fingers.  
  Unable to move below the neck with the spawn pinning him to the wall, Greyfang fell back on his last remaining weapon. Licking his elongating fangs to coat them in venomous acid from his Betcher’s gland, he bit down hard in a spray of blood. It was only when the pain of his fangs’ rapid elongation hit him that it registered that they shouldn’t be elongating at all. The spawn squealed in pain, pulling away from the bite. Greyfang tore a chunk of fresh free with his jaws, spitting aside as he slid down the wall.  
  Raising a hand to wipe the blood from his mouth, he felt the distended muzzle with a mounting horror. Something had gone very wrong with the gate, unlocking their DNA as they passed through.  
  His thoughts were interrupted as a mismatched array of claws and tentacles lifted him from the floor, only to slam him back down. He wheezed, coughing up blood from a punctured lung. A hoof fell on his lower back and he felt the internal rush of fluids as a kidney ruptured.  
  Greyfang looked up into a multitude of eyes. He saw hatred, rage and deepest madness reflected in them. Amongst them, a silver-flecked iris looked into him with a depthless pain.  
  He gathered what strength he had, forcing strength into limbs that were burning with agony, he pulled the hoofed leg off himself, showing the spawn off balance. Rolling under it, he picked up T’Bitjet’s fallen khopesh and rammed it through the red breastplate just under the jade scarab that seemed to stare mockingly at him. The spawn convulsed, then collapsed on him with a force that felt like it would shatter his skeleton.  
  When he had levered it off himself, Greyfang dragged the body away, stowing it in a saviour pod where the mutated mass could be discarded. Every bone in his body felt like it was breaking, his muscles on fire as he fought against the change wracking his own body.  
  The smell of blood drew him back to the place he had murdered his brother, or whatever his brother had become. He dropped to his knees, distended hands scrabbling forwards across the deck. The taste of flesh still fresh in his bloodstained mouth, he was unable to fight the urge to lap up the blood on the floor. As he drank deep, memories that were not his own flooded out of his omophagea into his thoughts.  
  He saw the fall of the Thousand Sons and knew they could not be saved. Sorcery ran in T’Bitjet’s blood and the blood of his Legion, their souls sold to it. The awareness that he had failed his Legion, failed his primarch, hit him like the footfall of a Titan.  
  Picking up his fallen axe with shaking hands, Greyfang fled into the dark.

The saviour pod thudded into the ground in the middle of a desolate wasteland, guided in by a flock of sleek crimson gunships that continued to wheel above it like vultures. The pod had made it close to the heart of the system before it was detected, and that alone made it worthy of investigation.  
  The gunships steadied their flight, settling into a stationary hover position with guns trained on the pod. Doors in their bellies slid open, allowing soldiers in the same gloss-red to rappel to the surface. Their boots touched the surface of Titan in silence, the sound absorbed by the dense atmosphere. They surrounded the pod and began cutting their way in.  
  It had begun to rain by the time the other gunship arrived. One of the crimson guards looked up, the methane rain cutting bright streaks in the tarnished silver of his mask. He issued an order in battle sign, a handful of guards tracking the figure that fell from the Thunderhawk’s gaping front hatch on wings of fire.  
  The Space Marine landed in a cloud of dark dust behind the cordon of guards. Three of them stowed their weapons and stepped out to receive the jump pack as he shed it. Like the rest of his armour, and the Thunderhawk above, it was unadorned by any mark or heraldry. The guards bowed as he stepped past them without acknowledgement to the newly opened wound torn in the side of the pod with lascutters. Bolter raised in one hand, sword held in a low guard across his body in the other, the Space Marine advanced into the darkness.  
  As soon as he crossed the threshold, a lance of agony pierced his brain. His enhanced vision, aided by the auto-senses in his helm, cut through the darkness to pick out runes carved at intervals on every surface. Psychic warding. It explained how the pod had come so close to escaping detection. Other, more savage marks scarred the walls. Deep gouges like the claw strikes of a canine became more prevalent as he made his way further into the ruined interior. It was hardly out of the question that a canine could have made them. The pod had detached from the Sixth Legion’s fleet. The runes, however, complicated the matter.  
  The interior was not a large space, and whatever had occupied the pod had rendered it a scene of utter devastation. Doors to stowage lockers were torn free, grav-harnesses hanging listlessly from the walls and exposed wiring sparking where it hung from the ceiling. In the mass of savaged plasteel, the Space Marine’s autosenses homed in on the shine of a jewel.  
  He gasped in shock at what he found. The jewel was a jade scarab set in the red breastplate of a Thousand Sons legionary, next to which a Prosperine khopesh jutted where it had, presumably, struck the killing blow. The legionary himself though, was an abomination of twisted flesh. The armour was bent and misshapen where the mutant’s engorged flesh had erupted through the gaps in the plate. Entire new limbs, tentacular, clawed and even ocular had forced their way to freedom with the stolen strength of transhuman biology.  
  More horrifying than all of this was the fact that there were chunks of missing flesh, tooth marks suggesting that something had been feeding on the corrupted body.  
  He was about to report his findings when he saw the discarded Fenrisian axe protruding from the wreckage. A creak of shifting metal and he whipped his bolter up, trigger half depressed. _I am not alone_. A faint scratch of claws against metal confirmed his thought.  
  Perhaps sensing it had been found, something leapt out from behind a mass of materiel piled in front of the hollow of a stowage hold. It was a blur in his vision as he pumped explosive bolts on fully automatic in its direction.  
 Outside, the guards tensed at the sound of gunfire.  
  It hit with the force of a cruising battle tank, cracking his breastplate and knocking bolter and blade from his grasp. He reeled as his head slammed back against the floor, lashing out with his fists. A blow connected, drawing a howl of pain and relieving the weight pressing down on him.  
  Rising, he saw his enemy. It prowled just out of arm’s reach, snarling. A huge lupine creature, almost as high at the shoulder as he was, that was somehow not quite a wolf. Its limbs were oddly jointed, disturbingly closer to malformed human limbs. It was limping, flecks of blood left on the ground and marring his armour. At least one of his shots had found its mark.  
  This time, he went on the offensive. Adrenaline and other, more potent, stimulants flooded his brain as he charged, lashing out with gauntleted fists. The creature sprang to the side, but its wound made it sluggish. His first blow thundered into its abdomen from below, the next collapsing one of its forelimbs. It scratched wildly at his armour, carving deep ravines in the ceramite with wickedly sharp claws.  
  For all that, it was ultimately unable to penetrate the power armour to reach the flesh beneath. He slammed a knee into its jaw before dropping an elbow on its spine. A kick to the chest sent it hurtling into the wall, several vertebrae dislocated and blood flowing freely from its mouth.  
  He picked up his fallen blade, fighting every instinct to plunge it into the creature’s throat and let its lifeblood pour out across the floor. He settled for stamping hard on its head, sending it into unconsciousness with a resounding crack of a fracturing skull.  
  “Varren reporting, patch me in to penitentiary,” he voxed over a channel encrypted to a degree that would have been considered absurd outside an active warzone a few years ago.  
  “ _Compliance_ ,” the monotone voice of a man whose brain had been scrubbed too many times to count replied.  
  The vox buzzed with static for a moment as it was re-routed before another voice answered. “ _Penitentiary receiving_.”  
  “Prepare a cell under blind protocol,” Macer Varren rolled the lupine form with a foot, his lip curling in distaste as he recognised the faintest trace of humanity still visible behind the distended muzzle. “I’m bringing in a prisoner.”

An old man, hooded and cloaked, walked into the chamber where they held the wolf that was not a wolf. It strained against the collar about its neck, desperate to pull its chain free of the wall and maul him. He smiled and took a step closer, leaning heavily on the eagle-topped staff he carried.  
  Reaching out with his second sight, he touched the spring of rage boiling within. He clutched the staff tighter, going deeper. There – buried, but still alive – he found what he sought.  
  He reached out to touch the almost tangible aura surrounding the wolf that was not a wolf. It grew calm, making no attempt to bite the hand stretched out towards it. He stepped forward again, his hand now resting gently on its head. He began to push the wolf down and draw out what was hidden beneath.  
  Slowly, the mental landscape of feral rage shifted. As it did, the body changed to match. It took several hours, but when it was complete a man, or something like a man, lay on his knees where once a wolf had stood. Even kneeling, he was so large that he was taller than the old man.  
  The old man’s face creased into a smile. He took a step back, sitting in chair bolted to the floor of the cell. Leaning his staff against the chair, he shifted uncomfortably on the bare metal seat and waited.  
  He waited, and watched, as the giant regained his senses with a groan. He tried to rise, but was too far from the wall. The chain pulled taught, sending him stumbling back into the wall. He leaned against it, head bowed as his newly remade hands explored the ring that collared him.  
  The old man spoke to him. “Do you remember who you are?”  
  “Darius Virdhason,” the wolf that had become a man looked up sharply, as if in surprise at the sound of his own voice, seeing the old man for the first time. The light of understanding returned to his eyes. “Darius Greyfang.”  
 “Good,” the old man smiled. “Now, do you know who I am?”  
  “You are the Sigillite. Malcador the Sigillite, First Lord of Terra.” A look of puzzlement crossed Greyfang’s features as he processed that information. “Am I on Terra?”  
  “No,” Malcador raised a hand to forestall the next question before it came. “I shall not say where you are. It is, in any case, of little import for the time being. You were found in a saviour pod that has been psychically warded in a bid to evade detection. This was shortly after the arrival of the Sixth Legion fleet.”  
  “I was on Prospero.”  
  “According to the Legion’s records, you went missing in action.”  
  Greyfang snorted, somewhere between amusement and derision. “I don’t know what happened between then and now any better than they.”  
  “Your name is marked with the rune Nástrǫnd.”  
  Greyfang’s eyes widened in alarm. Composing himself, he closed his eyes, slumping with his head back against the wall in resignation.  
  “What did you do to earn the mark of dishonour?” No response was forthcoming. Malcador leaned forwards, studying the Space Marine closely with narrowed eyes. He weighed his voice with a psychic push. “What did you do?”  
  Greyfang’s eyes snapped open in a face suddenly contorted in rage. He could feel the tendrils of Malcador’s mind probing at his own, but for all his fury he was unable to resist the compulsion.  
  “I tried to save my brother,” his voice was a wet leopard growl of restrained hatred through bared fangs. The tendrils sank deeper, seeking the core at the heart of this surface truth. “My blood brother, of the Thousand Sons.”  
  Greyfang sagged forward, panting, as the pressure withdrew from his mind. He spat at the Sigillite’s feet. Malcador sat back in the chair, steepled fingers resting gently against his lips.  
  “Tell me everything.”

Malcador found Varren in an observation cupola. The Knight Errant stood with his back to the Sigillite, palms resting on the quillons of his power sword as its tip rested on the tiled ground. The light refracted through the crystal dome danced across his unmarked armour, shimmering as it tried and failed to find purchase for reflection rather than dissipation.  
  “Have you need of my blade?” Varren did not turn, continuing to stare out into the void of space. Saturn hung above him, the never-blinking yellow orb keeping watch over the nameless fortress.  
  Malcador shook his head. “Not today, Macer. I was able to bring him back.” The Sigillite walked forward, standing next to Varren and smiling out at the stars with a measure of relief. “In time I think he will prove a valuable asset.”  
  Varren’s head turned at that, his face darkened with a scowl. “I do not think that wise,” he said. His tone suggested that was a huge understatement. “He is unstable.”  
  Malcador sighed. “The risk is great, but the potential reward far greater. He has a part yet to play, for good or ill.”  
  He turned to walk away, but paused. He looked up at Varren, whose gaze had returned to the sky. His face was sent in a grimace of reluctant acceptance. The Sigillite added, “I will see he is accompanied by a suitable control measure.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is a narrative rendition of a player's character bio from a Horus Heresy RPG I GMed. Darius Greyfang is Elf-Friend's brain-child. Abasi is Fresher's brain-child from 10,000 years later in Deathwatch.
> 
> Timeline:  
> c.938.M30: Compliance of Meiriona  
> c.950.M30: Founding of the Librarius  
> 000.M31: Battle of Phoenix Crag  
> 004.M31: Burning of Prospero  
> c.007.M31: Vlka Fenryka return to Sol


End file.
